With many outstanding examples of previous work with recycled glass to her credit, the City commissioned Argentinian artist Sol Mesz to create a piece that combined a recycling theme while depicting life in Palmdale.

The name “Nature Re-Presented” came from her own vision of the project from its onset: “The combination of organic materials (glass), production process (recycling, repurposing) and subject matter (nature, landscapes) synthesize the continuum of nature where recycling and environmental conservation are part of the same process: the glass comes from nature and it is re‐used to represent it back. The colors of the glass bottles recycled for this project (browns, greens, yellows) are within the colors found in nature.”

Process

To create “Nature Re-Presented,” scrap metal was provided by local businesses Vision Engineering (for the Joshua trees and poppy stems) and U.S. Architectural (Joshua tree leaves), while Allan Company coordinated with Strategic Materials, Inc. to contribute the glass.

Mesz’s process of preparing the glass included hand washing, sorting, and defining a kiln heating schedule to ensure that the glass would not crack or break so that the pieces would last once installed.